The Catholic Church is suing Lucas Arts, the company behind popular film franchise Star Wars, for intellectual property theft of all the Church’s main ideas.

The dispute was prompted by the use of a cross shaped light-sabre in the trailer for the latest film Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Under international copyright law the Catholic Church currently holds exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute and display the cross, and to make derivative works.

The lawsuit has now escalated into a claim of intellectual property theft against the production company for using all of the Church’s main ideas in its films over a period of more than 30 years.

“When we thought about what else we could sue Lucas Arts for, we began to realise that they had actually stolen many of our original ideas. For example, the notion of a shady evil dictator running a corrupt and rich empire and shooting lighting from his hands is totally our idea!

“Furthermore, the Church has had authority figures leading young boys astray for years and years. The characters of Anakin and the Emperor Lucas blatantly infringe our rights to our intellectual property, and we won’t stand for it.

“In fact the only thing that we are not suing Lucas Arts for is Jar-Jar Binks, they can keep that shit if they want.”

When Flipside approached George Lucas for comment, he just laughed and responded, “This isn’t my problem; I sold the rights to Disney so they can deal with this. I ripped it all off, but what do I care? Top banter from me, I can’t wait for Spielberg to hear about this!”